Contact information

Currently teaching

Education

B.A. Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley

Ph.D Biology at Boston University

Biography

The planktonic larvae of most marine fish and invertebrates are microscopic, yet they have the potential to travel far on ocean currents. How does larval dispersal influence metapopulation structure across the vast ranges of many marine species? This question is central to modern marine biology. The answers can have significant consequences for our understanding of marine ecology, evolution, and conservation.

A primary research goal in my lab is to better understand the ecological and evolutionary consequences of larval dispersal for marine species. Our approach is integrative: we employ probabilistic models to extract information from genetic data in the context of evidence from geology, remote sensing, and biophysical models.

I am also very interested in fostering international collaboration and open science. In this era of “big data” it is no longer possible for laboratories to address pressing questions about marine biodiversity by themselves. To this end, I and many others are putting together a collaborative network - the Diversity of the Indo-Pacific Network (DIPnet), and a database for structured metadata that describe biological samples - the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase - GeOMe.